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While yesterday seemed like the end of video reviews, interviews and playthroughs in the video game realm because of GoogleGoogle and YouTube’s new automated copyright enforcement system, it’s looking like it may just be a temporary issue than a landscape changing earthquake.

To sum up, here’s the official line from YouTube regarding the avalanche of copyright claims that were dumped on video game content creators yesterday, including some of the most popular personalities on the site:

“We recently enabled Content ID scanning on channels identified as affiliates of [Multi Channel Networks],” the YouTube representative said. “This has resulted in new copyright claims for some users, based on policies set by the relevant content owners. As ever, channel owners can easily dispute Content ID claims if they believe those claims are invalid.”

YouTubers were hit with a flood of copyright violation notices from both companies that had literally nothing to do with the games in question, or the game developers themselves, many of whom have said they did not order any such takedown requests.

Today, many big developers are coming out in support of the slighted YouTubers, many of whom rely on their videos to make a living.

“If you’re a YouTuber and are receiving content matches with the new changes, please be sure to contest them so we can quickly approve them. We are working on a long term solution, but that is the quickest way to solve issues immediately.”

“YouTubers: Pls let us know if you’ve had videos flagged today. These may be illegitimate flags not instigated by us. We are investigating.”

And Ubisoft went so far as to give a step by step of what to do regarding copyright claims on their games:

“If you happen to be hit with claims on any of your Ubisoft content, it may be that some of the audio is being auto-matched against the music cataloge on our digital stores – it might show up as being claimed by our distributor ‘idol’. In such cases please take the following steps and we can get it cleared for you.

1. Leave the video live for now.

2. Send us the URL of the affected video and let us know who flagged it.

To sum up what I said yesterday about this, all of this is completely on Google and YouTube for implementing a horrifyingly inept system where a vast majority of the notices are false positives. When people’s incomes are on the line, it’s serious business, and it’s astonishing how poorly this system has been debuted and implemented. It’s not often Google is seen as the corporate bad guy, but they’re coming off terribly in this situation.

YouTubers making content about games is a win for all three parties involved. YouTube gets views and sells ads on popular channels, the content creators get a portion of that revenue, and developers have more people talking about and buying their games.

Now, with game companies coming out directly in support of the YouTubers, I don’t see a way this isn’t cleaned up over time, and things return to business as usual soon enough. If half the copyright claims are completely bogus, and the other half are from companies who actually want these sorts of videos made, this cannot stand and will not permanently erase or alter the massive video game scene on YouTube the way some fear.

Yes, some companies are notoriously stingy with their game footage, but even they may not have a case. There’s a powerful argument that using clips of a game to do a video review is protected under “fair use,” which allows for public criticism of a product using that product as a reference. What Content ID filters like these are supposed to detect and take down are things like uploaded movies or TV shows. Gaming is a different matter, but most companies have shown they want their gameplay broadcast as they partner with livestreaming services like Twitch. YouTube appears to be dramatically far behind the times, and hopefully they’ll catch up soon so they can clean up this mess.

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